An Overview Of The LED Heart PWM Fading
This article was a summation of my boredom combined with the need for my to get my grandma something for her birthday. When those two collide, apparently you get a PCB with an LED heart on it that fades LEDs in a variety of ways. The PIC microcontroller did its job for us in this project, as did the PCB etching process that I've used several times now. I had some fears that a +9v battery might not have enough juice to run the system, but it turned out to be just fine.
What To Do Now
If you're looking to out-do me, there's plenty of avenues left for you to take. First thing that I can think of is make the heart LED bigger. This will require a different control algorithm as the PIC has limited general purpose I/O. Any type of I/O expander would do the trick, some kind of serial to parallel device. Anyway, use your imagination and I'm sure you can expand upon this project in many different directions.
Conclusion
The main goal of this project was to create an LED shaped heart that ran 6 pre-programmed modes in sequence and that goal was reached as we proved out in the data section of this article. I hope this article has inspired you all to make a cool widget for your grandma for her next birthday whenever it might be. Good luck!
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.
This article was a summation of my boredom combined with the need for my to get my grandma something for her birthday. When those two collide, apparently you get a PCB with an LED heart on it that fades LEDs in a variety of ways. The PIC microcontroller did its job for us in this project, as did the PCB etching process that I've used several times now. I had some fears that a +9v battery might not have enough juice to run the system, but it turned out to be just fine.
What To Do Now
If you're looking to out-do me, there's plenty of avenues left for you to take. First thing that I can think of is make the heart LED bigger. This will require a different control algorithm as the PIC has limited general purpose I/O. Any type of I/O expander would do the trick, some kind of serial to parallel device. Anyway, use your imagination and I'm sure you can expand upon this project in many different directions.
Conclusion
The main goal of this project was to create an LED shaped heart that ran 6 pre-programmed modes in sequence and that goal was reached as we proved out in the data section of this article. I hope this article has inspired you all to make a cool widget for your grandma for her next birthday whenever it might be. Good luck!
If you have any further questions, I implore you...don't be shy, take a look at the forums or ask a question there. I check them out regularly and love getting comments & questions.